Werner Stiebner

Werner Stiebner, who has died aged 73, was an electrician turned big-cat
tamer, and after surviving a ring debut in which he was flattened by a
panther called Mowgli, developed such an affinity with the animal that the
pair became the subject of scientific study.

Werner Stiebner with Mowgli at Circus Knie

6:49PM GMT 28 Mar 2013

Stiebner first started working with big cats as the result of a £1 wager with the circus owner Dicky Chipperfield. Stiebner had previously worked with polar bears, but when he teamed up with Mowgli and assorted lions, leopards and panthers, his inexperience with big cats showed through. The act involved Mowgli draping himself around Stiebner and then, as a climax, leaping into his arms from a distance of 18ft.

As Mowgli flew through the air, Stiebner apparently failed to brace himself correctly. When the animal landed, Stiebner was knocked to the floor, pinned underneath a badly let down Mowgli. But Stiebner survived the incident (winning his bet), and he and Mowgli later became renowned for their daring act. The trainer even invented a second act that saw him lie prone in the sawdust, while leopards and panthers sprawled across him.

Werner Stiebner was born on June 17 1939 and got his start in circuses as an electrician. From there he became a groom with the Ringling and Barnum Brothers’ “Greatest Show on Earth” before, in the 1970s, moving to the Swiss national Circus Knie, where he worked with Chipperfield’s panther group.

Feted for his daring approach to animal taming, Stiebner became an audience favourite. But while performing with the Circus Knie he also attracted the attention of Professor Heini Hediger, an eminent zoologist. Hediger was completing the research for what would become Man and Animal in the Zoo (1974), and set about investigating Stiebner’s relationship with Mowgli. The work that Hedinger published on the subject of zoo animal psychology concluded that it was remarkable that wild beast and grown man could become such amicable colleagues.

Stiebner continued to travel and work as a trainer throughout his life. After a spell at the Circus Althoff he spent the final 16 years of his career at the Phantasialands theme park in western Germany. There, his most challenging act involved choreographing a group of 18 tigers.